Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Saddam's Killing Fields

I'm reposting this documentary because the YouTube clips I linked to in this post have been removed.



PS: I'm glad I found this video, the entire documentary, which was made in 1993. If you want to understand how the Iraqi Kurds and Shia felt about Saddam's regime before 2003, this is a must see documentary. Even Sunni Arabs might be enraged, as they should be, because many Iraqi Sunni Arabs were murdered by Saddam's regime.

A few parts are untranslated, like the interviews with Iraqi Shia who fled to Kurdistan. At 14 minutes into the video, survivors of the 1991 massacre in the south tell of relatives who were tortured and then killed in front of them. At 25 minutes there is incredible footage of the southern marshes that was taken in the 70s, and then footage of how it looked in the 90s, after Saddam's regime drained them.

Ahmed Chalabi has his faults, but he is undoubtedly brilliant.

"In 2006, Wood [the historian who made this documentary] joined the British School of Archaeology in Iraq campaign, aiming to train and encourage new Iraqi archaeologists, and has lectured on the subject."

No comments :